Monthly Archives: June 2018

From her first marriage, Patricia Ann Spann had three children: a boy, then a girl and another boy. Things were not too good, evidently, because Patricia lose custody over them and the children were legally adopted by her mother-in-law.

But in 2008 Patricia met Cody Spann Jr., her oldest son, who at the time was 18. And she married him.
In Lawton, Comanche County, Oklahoma. She signed the papers using both her maiden and her married name, “Patricia Ann Clayton Spann”.

Fifteen moths later, in 2010, at the boy’s request a judge nullified their marriage on the grounds of incest. The Oklahoma laws categorically forbids unions with direct descendants.

In 2014 Patricia met her daughter, at the time 23 years old, Misty Velvet Dawn Spann.

And on March 25, 2016, the two women got married.

They moved in together in Duncan, Stephens County (OK), nearly 30 miles from the Texas border and less than 20 from Lawton where, once again, the wedding had taken place.
To get around the obstacle of their shared family name, Patricia Spann had used her maiden name upon filing the marriage licence application.

Perhaps not all the neighbors were fine with this new, close but reserved couple settling in. So, in August, Patricia and Misty received the visit of a Human Services Child Welfare Division investigator who, while assessing the state of the Spann children, found out that mother and daughter were legally married.

The women admitted both to their biological bond and to being married. Patricia declared to the investigator that she didn’t think they were breaking any law since her name no longer appeared on her daughter’s birth certificate, and that anyway, after being reunited, “they hit it off”.

Thus the authorities came to know of the incestuous relationship. The case was assigned to Duncan Police Detective Dustin Smith, who began the investigations on August 26, 2016, after a warning from the Human Services Division. In September, just months after they had married, in compliance with the law, the Spanns were formally charged.
Felony arrest warrants were issued in Stephens County District Court for both of them. If found guilty, they would face up to 10 years in prison.
After the arrest Misty and Patricia Ann were put in custody in Stephens County Jail. The bail was set at $10,000 for each woman.

As reported by Lawton Constitution, Patricia Spann insisted that she hadn’t had contact with her children until a few years earlier, claim contradicted by court records regarding her former marriage with her biological son. No charges were pressed for that marriage.

At Misty’s request, the marriage with her mother was annulled Oct. 12, 2017, as court records show. In November the girl, who claimed she was fraudulently induced into marriage by her mother, pleaded guilty to her incest charge. She was sentenced to probation for 10 years, two of which to be spent under the supervision of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.

But after the verdict, a legal technicality emerged, which does not allow deferred senteces – like probation – in incest cases. She was therefore allowed to withdraw her guilty plea and to enter a new plea.
After pleading guilty to the felony count, on March 13, 2018, 46.years-old Spann, born in Norman (OK), was transferred to prison for incest. A judged sentenced her to two years of prison, eight years probation and a $2,791 fine allocated as follows: a $1,500 fine, $300 to the State victims’ compensation fund, and $991 in legal fees. Upon her release, she will also be registered as a sex offender.
In this moment, the woman is held in prison in a Oklahoma State Jail, where she passed her first three months as a recluse.

Thus we have compiled a chronicle of a strange story from the deep South Central. The nature of these facts can amaze and astonish, pushing us to try and guess the inner dinamics that moved its protagonist, Patricia Ann Spann. What were her motivations? Is it possible to really understand?

This is why this is no biography. We can only get a glimpse of the vast array of different interpretation such a story can sustain, of the extent of speculations it suggests, of the powerful, mythical narratives it brings to mind. Where should we start?

Mrs. Josephine M. Bicknell died only one week before her sixtieth birthday; she was buried in Cleburne, Texas, at the beginning of May, 1928.

Once the coffin was lowered into the ground,her husband James C. Bicknell stood watching as the grave was filled with a thick layer of cement; he waited for an hour, maybe two, until the cement dried completely. Eventually James and the other relatives could head back home, relieved: nobody would be able to steal Mrs. Bicknell’s body – not the doctors, nor the other collectors who had tried to obtain it.

It is strange to think that a lifeless body could be tempting for so many people.
But the lady who was resting under the cement had been famous across the United States, many years before, under her maiden name: Josephine Myrtle Corbin, the Four-Legged Girl from Texas.

Myrtle was born in 1868 in Lincoln County, Tennessee, with a rare fetal anomaly called dipygus: her body was perfectly formed from her head down to her navel, below which it divided into two pelvises, and four lower limbs.

Her two inner legs, although capable of movement, were rudimentary, and at birth they were found laying flat on the belly. They resembled those of a parasitic twin, but in reality there was no twin: during fetal development, her pervis had split along the median axis (in each pair of legs, one was atrophic).

between each pair of legs there is a complete, distinct set of genital organs, both external and internal, each supported by a pubic arch. Each set acts independently of the other, except at the menstrual period. There are apparently two sets of bowels, and two ani; both are perfectly independent,– diarrhoea may be present on one side, constipation on the other.

Myrtle joined Barnum Circus at the age of 13. When she appeared on stage, nothing gave away her unusual condition: apart from the particularly large hips and a clubbed right foot, Myrtle was an attractive girl and had an altogether normal figure. But when she lifted her gown, the public was left breathless.

She married James Clinton Bicknell when she was 19 years old, and the following year she went to Dr. Lewis Whaley on the account of a pain in her left side coupled with other worrying symptoms. When the doctor announced that she was pregnant in her left uterus, Myrtle reacted with surprise:

“I think you are mistaken; if it had been on my right side I would come nearer believing it”; and after further questioning he found, from the patient’s observation, that her right genitals were almost invariably used for coitus.

That first pregnancy sadly ended with an abortion, but later on Myrtle, who had retired from show business, gave birth to four children, all perfectly healthy.

Given the enormous success of her show, other circuses tried to replicate the lucky formula – but charming ladies with supernumerary legs were nowhere to be found.
With typical sideshow creativity, the problem was solved by resorting to some ruse.
The two following diagrams show the trick used to simulate a three-legged and a four-legged woman, as reported in the 1902 book The New Magic (source: Weird Historian).

If you search for Myrtle Corbin’s pictures on the net, you can stumble upon some photographs of Ashley Braistle, the most recent example of a woman with four legs.
The pictures below were taken at her wedding, in July 1994, when she married a plumber from Houston named Wayne: their love had begun after Ashley appeared in a newspaper interview, declaring that she was looking for a “easygoing and sensitive guy“.

Unfortunately on May 11, 1996, Ashley’s life ended in tragedy when she made an attempt at skiing and struck a tree.

Did you guess it?
Ashley’s touching story is actually a trick, just like the ones used by circus people at the turn of the century.
This photographic hoax comes from another bizarre “sideshow”, namely the Weekly World News, a supermarket tabloid known for publishing openly fake news with funny and inventive titles (“Mini-mermaid found in tuna sandwich!” “Hillary Clinton adopts a baby alien!”, “Abraham Lincoln was a woman!”, and so on).

The “news” of Ashley’s demise on the July 4, 1996 issue.

Another example of a Weekly World News cover story.

To end on a more serious note, here’s the good news: nowadays caudal duplications can, in some instances, be surgically corrected after birth (it happened for example in 1968, in 1973 and in 2014).

And luckily, pouring cement is no longer needed in order to prevent jackals from stealing an extraordinary body like the one of Josephine Myrtle Corbin Bicknell.

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